Jim Brown
now and then it keeps you running Jim is born at seven o’clock in the morning on the 110th anniversary of the death of J.E.B. Stuart, a Confederate general who died May 12, 1864. Rosie Brown, a skinny habitual smoker who tried to stop after she knew she was pregnant but didn’t always manage, is so worn out after the hours-long labour that her husband Bill’s first gift to her is to go out and buy her a pack of Jacks Menthol Light. She goes out and smokes half the pack the minute the doctors say she can, leaving him with the baby. Bill stays in the hospital room, gingerly holding his armful of a son. The doctor is a handsome man from Georgia, whose peach-sweet accent charmed Rosie, and a product of his fifty years born and raised in the South, who doesn’t believe in telling women bad news when there are men to hear it. He takes Bill aside. “Mr. Brown, I didn’t want to tell your wife, but this baby of yours has cerebral palsy. We won’t know more than that until he’s older, but the fact is he isn’t going to have an easy life.” Bill nods and listens to the doctor and agrees to break it gently to his wife, but when Rosie comes back in, smelling of cigarettes, he sits down on the bed with her and slips the baby back into her arms. “What’s his name, Rosie?” he asks, brushing back his wife’s limp brown hair from her face. “James Ewell,” she says proudly. “James Ewell Brown. Well, if that ain’t a good Southern name.” “We’ll call him Jeb for short. Ain’t he beautiful, baby?” “He’s beautiful,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else about Jim for a long time. searching for a truer sound Jim Brown graduated a year early from UT with a double major in Business and History; he was hired immediately and quickly zipped up the corporate ladder to head of PR at Beaumont's, a marketing firm situated to serve clients mainly in the Tennessee-Georgia area. After a few years there he married the daughter of the head of Marketing, Laurie Jean, with whom he had one daughter, Amanda. When Amanda was five they divorced, he went back to school and got his Master's in American History, as well as a teaching certification for tertiary education. Once done, he quit his job and moved to the small upstate New York town of Britannia, where his life began to suck in earnest. This version of Jim is still living in Chattanooga, the divorce having become final a little while ago, working days at the firm and going to school at night. At an overnight PR event in New York he had the amazing good fortune to meet a young man named Emory Scott, a lawyer, with whom he began a somewhat irregular romance. not enough living on the outside His advisor sat him down when he first added the second major and said, “Look, James, you’re taking an awful lot of classes already, you’re going very fast. With your illness to consider--” “I’m fine. I’m all right, sir.” He was already starting to get better at softening his accent, mellowing it until it was hard to identify a particular state, just something generically Southern and pleasant. “Can I ask you why you’re doing this?” “Yes, sir. I want to get a good job.” “There are plenty of good jobs available for a single major. There are good jobs available out of a VoTech school, to be candid.” “My dad never went to college, sir. He was a construction worker most of his life. I don’t want to end up like him. I want a career. I want a future.” “Some people would argue that your father had a career and a future.” “I want to be more than he was.” It was the same thing he’d told Brian the weekend before, albeit with less finesse, after his sixth beer, when he and Brian were sitting on the couch in somebody’s room at somebody’s party. “I have to get the hell away from it,” he’d said. “I can’t be my goddamn dad, some blue-collar job for-ever. I want to make some money and move to the city. Wanna be somebody important, not just Tennessee white trash. They named me after a goddamn Rebel general, like they wanted me to grow up and fight in some war, like, what, I’m supposed to uphold some value system where girls wear big dresses and everybody has a slave in the kitchen? What the hell? We have to give up. The South just has to give the hell up, we’re not Johnny Rebs and our cause was shit, and I’m not going to be stuck hanging around with a bunch of people who believe the same shit my parents do.” hold on to what you can Jim has mellowed somewhat from his school years, but he still has a lot of unresolved issues. In other particulars, he is insecure, a proper Southern gentleman (most of the time), and has discovered since hooking up with Emory that he kind of likes wearing a dress. He has a great deal of unaddressed guilt regarding his daughter--one of the major reasons his wife insisted on the divorce was that he was such a workaholic that he never spent any time at home actually getting to know her, and it's fairly true. The other big reason was his insistence on returning to school. staying in between the lines “Jim, you can’t do this to me,” Laurie Jean says, while they’re cleaning up after dinner. There’s a housekeeper to do it, but Jim sometimes rolls up his sleeves and just washes the dishes. “What’s wrong with my taking some classes?” he asks, even though he already knows. “What do you think my friends are going to say if they find out my husband is going to night school? I mean, at least it’s not a community college, but this is so embarrassing.” “I’m just doing something for myself.” “I don’t know how you can be so selfish. Can’t you at least think about how this makes me look? People aren’t nice in our social circle. I have to have lunch with these people all the time and it’s just one big competition.” “So I make a shitty Stepford husband, is that the problem?” “Don’t you dare swear around me, Jim Brown. I’m your wife. You have to think about my life, too.” “Jesus.” He rubs his face with one damp hand. “This is ridiculous. You wouldn’t even have lunch with these people if it weren’t for my job, so I don’t see why there’s an issue over me not being good enough for them.” “This is not all about you! I did not magically move up in the world by marrying you. You are so selfish and egocentric. I have always had to worry about appearances, I have had to deal with everyone talking about your horrible walking thing, I have had to make up explanations for why your parents are out of the picture, because they’re living in some trailer park in Hicksville, Tennessee, and think Fibber McGee and Molly is sophisticated humour. I am sick of having to justify you to all my friends.” “I’m sorry you feel you have to be friends with idiots who can’t handle the idea that your family might be less than perfect--” “My family is not less than perfect, Jim! You are less than perfect!” Quietly, he says, “I need these classes. With work I hardly ever see you or Mandy. I don’t do anything for myself, and I need--I need to do something to get over all the revisionist history I heard growing up. I’ll get control over it if I learn it truthfully. I need this for myself.” “Maybe you should have it by yourself.” She turns and walks out of the kitchen. never seems to die What Jim doesn't know about himself is that he is actually Sagramore. It will explain the nightmares he has, and the way sometimes other languages he doesn't speak whisper at him when he's not thinking. For now, though, he's unaware of this other self hidden inside him. the trail's spent with fear Some miscellaneous other things that make Jim feel guilty: * He likes men * He doesn't like to talk to his parents much * He is unimpressed by religion * He walks funny * No, really, he walks funny and he looks stupid and god damn it * He lies--more in the past than now * His name * White privilege * Male privilege * Argh not knowing when Annika Moore is p much his only ally; but as crazy teenaged daughters of your current crush go, she's on the high end of the scale. Harvestman really doesn't like him. both feet on the floor Jim is mine, Sam Trammell is his own, "Windfall" is by Son Volt. Category:Characters Category:Living